ESCANABA, Mich. (WZMQ) – The Delta County Airport is preparing for travel and equipment improvements later this year.
The airport is receiving $1,090,486 through a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grant program. The funds will primarily be used to expand the airport’s snow removal equipment building. Manager Andrea Nummilien says the airport will also purchase its first new piece of snow removal equipment in years.
“There are some really great all-in-one pieces of equipment,” she said. “With small staffs like we have at the airport, having a machine that can do multiple jobs at one time is ideal.”
It’s all part of Delta County’s five-year Airport Improvement Plan, developed with the FAA.
“Even though we’re a small, rural airport in a small, rural community, the FAA still requires us to follow the same standards as a large airport,” Nummilien explained. “They recognize that we might not have the available funding for that, so we get an annual grant of a million dollars.”
In order to be eligible to receive that funding, 10,000 people must fly out of the Delta County Airport each year. Nummilien says while numbers have been great over the last few years, the current pilot shortage has made it a challenge to meet that quota.
Since December, the Delta County Airport has been sharing SkyWest Airlines flights to Detroit and Minneapolis with Iron Mountain’s Ford Airport.
“When we share a plane with another airport, that cuts our numbers in half,” said Nummilien. “That’s the difference between getting a $1 million grant if we get over 10,000 enplanements, and if we get under 10,000 enplanements, that’s a $100,000 grant.”
This week, the Delta County Airport received some exciting news. Those tagged flights will end for the month of July, giving the airport some breathing room to meet that 10,000 passenger goal.
“We don’t have a picture of August and September yet, but we’re really excited to have our air service all to ourselves again,” said Nummilien. “It’s a really good thing for our community, and then our friends over in Iron Mountain too, it’s really a great thing for their community.”
Read more about the grant funding the airport will receive here.
